1. Field of the Invention
The invention is generally related to workflow in research, development, as well as manufacturing, and particularly to tools for automating the performance and documenting of research, development as well as manufacturing activities.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many researchers employ laboratory notebooks, automated spreadsheets such as Excel® available from Microsoft Corporation of Redmond Wash., as will as automated mathematical packages for performing and/or documenting research, development.
In the design of laboratory procedures, it is necessary to take advantage of batch-based regularity. Designers should be able to create a procedure using batch's of operations in place of individual operations, allowing them to easily imply the existence of significant fine-grained structure. The key to batch-based procedure design is to define a simple rule for deriving the fine-grained topology from the batch level procedure created by the user. The rule, or algorithm, should be understandable and predictable for users, while providing them with the power to create a large variety of useful fine-grained topologies.